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In September 1909, Isaac Stringer, the bishop of the Yukon Diocese, started a 500-mile journey from Fort McPherson to Dawson City. He, his friend Charles Johnson, and their guides wound up getting lost in the Arctic territory, weathering some 51 days of snow and freezing cold, long before the invention of high-performance outdoor gear, but well before ethical consideration of fur and animal products became de rigueur. It was a fashion choice that proved lifesaving: When Stringer and co. ran out of food, they resorted to eating their boots. (Interesting fact: The soles were tastier than the tops, Stringer dutifully recorded.)

I'm thankful I only learned about Stringer - during a tour of Whitehorse's Old Log Church Museum - after returning from my own adventure in Yukon's wilderness. Not that this would have stopped me. When I heard about Sky High Wilderness Ranch outfitter's eight-day camping and horseback trek through the Yukon Territory's Ibex mountain range, my long-dormant inner cowgirl yippee-kayayed. At last, a chance to leave my desk job in Toronto to travel like a pioneer in the back country and see Canada's most rugged landscapes and, I hoped, our iconic wildlife up close.

Our tour group met at the ranch, a few kilometres northwest of Whitehorse. We were a diverse crew, just like the invading Klondikers of yore. The other tourists were Dennis Wright and Jane Stirling, a British couple; the expedition leaders were Ian McDougall, 58, a shy and thoughtfulseven-foot-tallCalifornian and Deb Wild (truly), a fortysomething peppy blond based in Alberta. They've both been trappers, lived off the land, and led groups through the territory for years. They had the piercing gazes of people used to scanning the horizon for routes and wildlife. And they both had shotguns, in case of any emergency bear encounters.

We set out from the ranch practically a travelling menagerie. Along with 12 horses - five carrying riders, five pack horses carrying gear and two coming along to meet the next group of tourists - we also had three dogs. My equine host was a smart, gentle palomino named Golden Girl. She acted like a typical horse: graceful, hardworking, mostly obedient yet prone to fits of obstinacy that were entertaining so long as it wasn't you being disobeyed. Within hours, Golden Girl started holding up our team by taking snack breaks whenever she saw a patch of grass, which was often enough that I had to cut a switch so I could tap her haunches (gently) to get her to hurry up.

Dennis's horse, a stallion named Handsome, would often bolt whenever Dennis dismounted to lend someone (usually me) a hand with their horse, proving the maxim that no good deed goes unpunished.

On the second day of our journey into the interior, we trotted out to Coal Lake to fish for grayling and lake trout for supper, when we caught something else: a brief glimpse of a female moose a few hundred metres down a hill from us. But she disappeared in a flash when the dogs gave chase. Most of our wildlife encounters would be similarly fleeting: beavers swimming in a far-off lake, bald eagles perched on trees across a valley, trumpet swans doing a loop around a creek where we stopped for lunch.

If the wildlife was a little scarce, the scenery was 360 degrees. On Day 5, we rode so high that I thought we were going to run out of sky: We travelled through a snow-dotted mountain pass at least 5,000 feet up, through the bases of the rough hewn peaks of the mountains. Completely devoid of vegetation and covered with dull brown-black rocks, they looked as if some long ago creator had simply shrugged and not bothered finishing the peaks, thinking no one would ever drop by to see them. And, in fact, our guides told us that many of the Yukon's mountains and creeks had no official names.

"It's a bit like being Neil Armstrong," Dennis said at one point. "You get the feeling we're travelling in country where no one has been before."

The next day, we passed through the remains of forests decimated by fires decades ago, the horses gingerly picking their paths through an eerie, silver, statuary garden of what had once been living trees. The live forests were less fun: After hours of awkwardly ducking around spruces and cedars while seated on a moving horse, it occurred to me that bushwhacking might actually mean getting whacked by bushes, and not the other way around.

The advantages of having so many daylight hours to burn became most obvious on the solstice. We'd broken camp around 2 p.m. (a fairly typical start time, no matter how early we got up in the morning) and had a gruelling day's ride, crossing Friday Creek back and forth searching for a hoof-friendly path, walking along the edges of ridges with sheer drops, at one point dismounting to lead our horses down a hill too steep to ride and just barely flat enough to hike. The only respite came when we hit some tundra blanketed in yellow and beige lichen, greeted by the cheerful tweets of hidden golden plovers.

When we finally picked a spot to camp along the Ibex River, it was close to 11 p.m. After putting up the tents, we devoured giant bowls of moose meat chili and toasted the sun with mugs of red wine as it began its descent at about 11: 30.

"It's been the sort of trip that reveals what you're like when the props of society are removed," Dennis mused. "It really shows you how well you can cope, how small your box is," Jane added.

In at least one way, my box proved impossibly small. And cold. The night before, we were camping in tents along Friday Creek around 3,300 feet up. I woke up around 2 a.m. with deep, convulsing shivers. I was freezing. Worse, I had no more clothing or blankets to pile on. Panicking, I hurried out of my tent, did a few jumping jacks and jogged over to Deb's tent and woke her up. She, too, was feeling the chill. Instead of building a fire, she convinced me that I should rely on that old saw that the surest way to warm up was to use someone else's body heat.

On her advice, I crawled into Ian's tent and under his sleeping bag, which was merely draped over him since he seemed to have the resting internal temperature of a blast furnace. At the time, I didn't even know his last name, but I spooned him shamelessly. Soon the shuddering stopped, and I drifted off to sleep while wondering if the macho explorers of legend - Frobisher, Shackleton, Scott, maybe even the good Bishop Stringer - had secretly snuggled with each other come nightfall.

The next night, I bunked with the guide again; there was frost on the ground when we rose in morning. By Night 6, I improvised a hot water bottle by pouring boiling water into my drinking flask, added four horse blankets and a tarp to my sleeping roll and I was finally warm enough to sleep on my own. I don't measure up to explorers of old, but I think this trip taught me a little about survival, and maybe even about living.

- Travel assistance provided by Travel Yukon.

IF YOU GO

- Air Canada and WestJet offer flights to Whitehorse from most major Canadian cities.

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